Irish Film and Television – 2021

Abstract

In September 2021, RTE screened Ken Wardrop’s Cocooned, an exploration of how the elderly in Ireland coped with the unprecedented sequence of lockdowns prompted by the Covid pandemic. Though emphasizing the humour with which the subjects of the film confronted their situation, the documentary also emphasized the confined nature of their lives, shooting them almost exclusively through closed windows as they looked out over (typically dark) exteriors.

Given the extent to which Covid conditions had curtailed production activity in at least the first half of 2020, the reintroduction of another prolonged lockdown in January 2021 might have seen Wardrop’s film regarded as an analogue for the Irish screen production sector entering another period of hibernation.